2011-12-15
Film Festivals For Filmmakers, a short documentary film I just made
This is a fourteen-minute short documentary film about film festivals and tips for creating a great film. It is a collection of interviews that I did with Marv Newland, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Dennis Burke, Martin Rose and Sandy Gow. Each artist had about one to two hours of talk with me, and the total length for the original shot was ten hours. I spent thirty hours to cut and edit this video to present to my fourth year Social Practice class as my group researching project about film festivals. About thirty animation students have viewed this film during the presentation, and it won a round of applause. I really believe that there is a great amount of wisdom, experience and knowledge has been shared by these artists in this film. Hopefully you would also find some helpful information and enjoy watching this video. Thank you.
Canada Line Project WIP journal (Dec.14th)
I think this is going to be my final journal of this year about Canada line project. The project will be published on mid January on Canada Line TV system. Our benefactors have visited our class today and they saw the four pieces together and highly complemented our work as a class. Later Martin and I stayed after class to figure out some final rendering issue with our episode, and with our technician Steve's help, we are able to generate two versions of the file. One HD 1440*1080, the other one is 880*660. I see Martin put both files into his dropbox. Therefore, congratulations people from team the other world! We are truly finished with this project! For people from my class, if you are interested in getting a copy of this file, it is in the old place on the same station that I mentioned on moodle post. Anyway, here is a link for the finished product from team the other world, enjoy the show. HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY!!!
http://vimeo.com/33323602
http://vimeo.com/33323602
2011-12-12
2011-12-08
Canada Line Project WIP journal (Dec.8th)
We got a satisfying result for our episode team the other world for Canada Line project from my experimental animation class. There were a few mistakes I created for the transition from team the other world, due to the confusion and lack of information. Omar from the painting department provided a clearer statement about what they have visualized the transition would be like. We also received an updated, much more polished painting background from Omar. I added those parts in after Wednesday's class. Also Martin pointed out that there needed to be a few more frames of drawings to smooth out the man-to-bird transition. Cody suggested we should have two flaps of the bird flying. I fixed the editing according to people's feedbacks, and did a few more drawings in photoshop for the man-to-bird transition. So there we go. It is done! Here is a movie file that I quickly put up together as a reference for the behind scene editing process during each week's editing.
My main responsibility in this project is to collect, organize and put all files from everyone in the group into a time-based piece in premiere project as an editor. I was part of the set build up, part of the puppet creation, part of the character animation, mainly on directing. This piece is a group work and teamwork with everyone's great effort. So, thank you all, my great team members and Martin. It has been a great experience working with you guys. Special thanks to my dear Mr. Security Bal, without you I would not be able to keep a healthy state. You kept me eating and drinking normally even during late working hours, so a billion thanks to you from me! Anyway, enjoy this behind scene editing movie, here you can truly see how each week the piece is improving better and better.
http://vimeo.com/33324448
My main responsibility in this project is to collect, organize and put all files from everyone in the group into a time-based piece in premiere project as an editor. I was part of the set build up, part of the puppet creation, part of the character animation, mainly on directing. This piece is a group work and teamwork with everyone's great effort. So, thank you all, my great team members and Martin. It has been a great experience working with you guys. Special thanks to my dear Mr. Security Bal, without you I would not be able to keep a healthy state. You kept me eating and drinking normally even during late working hours, so a billion thanks to you from me! Anyway, enjoy this behind scene editing movie, here you can truly see how each week the piece is improving better and better.
http://vimeo.com/33324448
2011-12-07
Gradfilm work update (soundtrack)
http://vimeo.com/33275977
The above link is a sound mixing track that I am currently working on for my grad film. I have talked to my sound professor, Dennis Burke, he said that my current sound track is still too literal, there is no space for audiences' own interpretation. He suggested me to take out the narrator's voice-over as much as possible and try to create ambiguity for my piece. Otherwise it would just be story that is too obvious. I am taking out several sentences out from the previous soundtrack. I think for next year's production I will need to ask my voice actor to get into the sound recording room again to maybe creating another sound track with more progress of emotions and more dialogues or so, instead of flat, monotone narration. Anyway, here is what I have got so far.
The above link is a sound mixing track that I am currently working on for my grad film. I have talked to my sound professor, Dennis Burke, he said that my current sound track is still too literal, there is no space for audiences' own interpretation. He suggested me to take out the narrator's voice-over as much as possible and try to create ambiguity for my piece. Otherwise it would just be story that is too obvious. I am taking out several sentences out from the previous soundtrack. I think for next year's production I will need to ask my voice actor to get into the sound recording room again to maybe creating another sound track with more progress of emotions and more dialogues or so, instead of flat, monotone narration. Anyway, here is what I have got so far.
2011-12-06
Canada Line Project WIP journal (Dec.6th)
This is an updated journal report for my work at team the other world for Canada Line project from my experimental animation class. Last Wednesday's class, we have presented the latest work in progress reel to our sponsors. And they were pleased with the level of completeness of our group's project. They asked if there were more to add. Our professor believed we could push this project up to a higher level.
Martin provided us a very specific note on the animation flaws of our puppet. He stated that the flying animation was good, but the animation for the puppet drowsing in the train and blown away were not well done, as there were unsteady shifts and movements of the puppet and the set. Martin suggested that if we practiced more with the puppet, like the flying scene animation, which he thought as later production, we would feel more comfortable animating it. After I read through the notes and studied the animation scenes for both the drowsing scene David, Emilie, and Nick did, and the flying scene that Nick and I did, I noticed that for this kind of puppet animation, unless you are the absolute animation professional, otherwise it got to be a team work to make it work. The difference between the qualities of the two scenes is that for the flying scene I was directing Nick to move the actual puppet while I was using computer program to check carefully for any possible visual flaws, either it was an exposing masking tape under the cloth, or if the head did not have enough movements. When I went to work for cleaning up the images while the rest group members were working on shooting, later on they told me, each person got a chance to animate the puppet, but no one kept a constant look at the animation shots. Also, Martin suggested that we should get better lighting plus a tighter close up shot for the first scene. The puppet also needed to be fixed up with more details. Martin also informed Judy to build a more muscular body for the puppet.
For last week, Judy built a new body with much softer wire embedded inside for animating. Nick carved out the skin of the puppet head and worked on the puppet head basis. Emilie and David worked on setting up and adjusting the lighting for a green screen shot. Due to certain events that happened later during the production process, I took over the task to build up the puppet's face, hair, and texture. Judy helped me with building the jaw and eyes of the puppet after she finished building the puppet's body. After all her hard work, Judy had an event to participate for Saturday night, so Emilie, David and I start to work on the animation session of the puppet. I explained my observation to both Emilie and David about how we need to have one person constantly standing right in front the computer to check and direct the animator's move for the puppet, both Emilie and David have been very kind and understanding to volunteer to animate the puppet and let me direct them.
Emilie went to animate the puppet drowsing scene first. David was working on setting up the puppet. The actual new puppet's body scale was much larger than the set. David put a lot efforts in adjusting the camera and bending the puppet's knees to create the illusion that the puppet fitted the train. When I told Emilie what to do with the puppet and began the shot, I found Emilie's way of animating the puppet was very gentle and delicate. Once I told her some directions to move the puppet, she could get the puppet moving to the exact position I wanted very quickly. Later when Emilie took a break, I asked David to animate the puppet, and soon found that David had a different animating characteristics from Emily. When David moved the puppet, there were more force and power, so the puppet movements were broad. Then I shifted the strategies based on my two animators' different animating style. Emilie did the interior scene for the guying falling into sleep, because this scene required gentle animation. David did the puppet blown away scene to make the movements bold and vivid.
As a result, the animation quality for this time was quite high. After the shot, I went to edit the timing for the scenes so that I could deliver the file to David, who was an expert for compositing and AfterEffects and he handled the background compositing and masking out the wire on the puppet body during flying and green screen. I finished putting things together on Saturday evening after the animating session. After I came home and re-looked at my editing, I felt unsatisfied with the timing. I arranged to meet with David on Monday afternoon with a polished version of editing for him to composite the background into the scene. Yet since masking session in AfterEffects on station 241 did not work well on Monday afternoon, David had to bring the file back home to work on the compositing process.
Meanwhile I collected the files from the painting department, delivered by Cody. Since there was no specific direction about what images should be on which spot at what length of time from the painting department, I have to guess to figure it out myself as an editor. I collected well polished files that seemed to be the final versions, imported some of them in photoshop to fix up the lighting and cut out the backgrounds.
The process for editing still images and set up the correct timing was a long process, sort of like playing a puzzle game by placing all pieces in the right position. For this ten seconds piece, I have viewed thousands of times for every week to make sure I was doing a correct job. Every Monday or Tuesday of the week I would stay working on station 241 till the security needed to shut the school door. Late night at Emily Carr was my favorite time. My dear security, Bal, was always supportive and offered me his homemade cookies and desert to back me up. If I could do an adequate enough job for editing the piece as a whole, Bal would be for sure one of my biggest supporting source. On Wednesday morning David would bring the finished composting version and transport the file to our premiere project. Before that, here is a link for our current progress updating.
http://vimeo.com/33065324
Martin provided us a very specific note on the animation flaws of our puppet. He stated that the flying animation was good, but the animation for the puppet drowsing in the train and blown away were not well done, as there were unsteady shifts and movements of the puppet and the set. Martin suggested that if we practiced more with the puppet, like the flying scene animation, which he thought as later production, we would feel more comfortable animating it. After I read through the notes and studied the animation scenes for both the drowsing scene David, Emilie, and Nick did, and the flying scene that Nick and I did, I noticed that for this kind of puppet animation, unless you are the absolute animation professional, otherwise it got to be a team work to make it work. The difference between the qualities of the two scenes is that for the flying scene I was directing Nick to move the actual puppet while I was using computer program to check carefully for any possible visual flaws, either it was an exposing masking tape under the cloth, or if the head did not have enough movements. When I went to work for cleaning up the images while the rest group members were working on shooting, later on they told me, each person got a chance to animate the puppet, but no one kept a constant look at the animation shots. Also, Martin suggested that we should get better lighting plus a tighter close up shot for the first scene. The puppet also needed to be fixed up with more details. Martin also informed Judy to build a more muscular body for the puppet.
For last week, Judy built a new body with much softer wire embedded inside for animating. Nick carved out the skin of the puppet head and worked on the puppet head basis. Emilie and David worked on setting up and adjusting the lighting for a green screen shot. Due to certain events that happened later during the production process, I took over the task to build up the puppet's face, hair, and texture. Judy helped me with building the jaw and eyes of the puppet after she finished building the puppet's body. After all her hard work, Judy had an event to participate for Saturday night, so Emilie, David and I start to work on the animation session of the puppet. I explained my observation to both Emilie and David about how we need to have one person constantly standing right in front the computer to check and direct the animator's move for the puppet, both Emilie and David have been very kind and understanding to volunteer to animate the puppet and let me direct them.
Emilie went to animate the puppet drowsing scene first. David was working on setting up the puppet. The actual new puppet's body scale was much larger than the set. David put a lot efforts in adjusting the camera and bending the puppet's knees to create the illusion that the puppet fitted the train. When I told Emilie what to do with the puppet and began the shot, I found Emilie's way of animating the puppet was very gentle and delicate. Once I told her some directions to move the puppet, she could get the puppet moving to the exact position I wanted very quickly. Later when Emilie took a break, I asked David to animate the puppet, and soon found that David had a different animating characteristics from Emily. When David moved the puppet, there were more force and power, so the puppet movements were broad. Then I shifted the strategies based on my two animators' different animating style. Emilie did the interior scene for the guying falling into sleep, because this scene required gentle animation. David did the puppet blown away scene to make the movements bold and vivid.
As a result, the animation quality for this time was quite high. After the shot, I went to edit the timing for the scenes so that I could deliver the file to David, who was an expert for compositing and AfterEffects and he handled the background compositing and masking out the wire on the puppet body during flying and green screen. I finished putting things together on Saturday evening after the animating session. After I came home and re-looked at my editing, I felt unsatisfied with the timing. I arranged to meet with David on Monday afternoon with a polished version of editing for him to composite the background into the scene. Yet since masking session in AfterEffects on station 241 did not work well on Monday afternoon, David had to bring the file back home to work on the compositing process.
Meanwhile I collected the files from the painting department, delivered by Cody. Since there was no specific direction about what images should be on which spot at what length of time from the painting department, I have to guess to figure it out myself as an editor. I collected well polished files that seemed to be the final versions, imported some of them in photoshop to fix up the lighting and cut out the backgrounds.
The process for editing still images and set up the correct timing was a long process, sort of like playing a puzzle game by placing all pieces in the right position. For this ten seconds piece, I have viewed thousands of times for every week to make sure I was doing a correct job. Every Monday or Tuesday of the week I would stay working on station 241 till the security needed to shut the school door. Late night at Emily Carr was my favorite time. My dear security, Bal, was always supportive and offered me his homemade cookies and desert to back me up. If I could do an adequate enough job for editing the piece as a whole, Bal would be for sure one of my biggest supporting source. On Wednesday morning David would bring the finished composting version and transport the file to our premiere project. Before that, here is a link for our current progress updating.
http://vimeo.com/33065324
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)